UFC 272 – After Beating Jorge Masvidal, Colby Covington Is Likely To Continue Making It Personal

Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal didn’t touch gloves at the start of their UFC 272 main event Saturday night, a display of sportsmanship and customary respect among athletes as their prizefights are underway. take place.

But for these two boxers, former teammates and roommates, whose relationship deteriorated in the most personal of ways, there was no way for that to happen.

That probably doesn’t bother a person inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, or anyone watching a pay-per-view broadcaster, for that matter. Everyone just needs to slide a little closer to the edge of their seats, if sitting is even an option for fans who have been waiting with eager anticipation for this grim match.

The war itself? It did not survive the fiery buildup. Oh, sure, there are malicious looks exchanged at the end of each round. And, for a brief moment in Round 4, when Masvidal punched Covington with a punch and sent him stumbling to the ground, the match felt as if it were going to be a standout match. But for the most part, what happened before their fiery conversation between rounds was not entirely under Covington’s control, who used six kills and mastered the position to secure a decisive victory in the forward tilt (50-44, 50-45, 49-46).

When the final whistle blew for Round 5, Covington was at the top, delivering big punches. The boxers got up, Masvidal stopped short, and they didn’t hug. When sports committee officials ran into the Octagon to make sure the fish was finished for the night, the boxers yawned from afar. Masvidal continued to scream. Covington stuck his tongue out and grabbed his burly fan.

The ending is repulsive for a fight in which both men promise unabated violence. Strategically, Masvidal wants to keep the fight going, where he feels most comfortable and where he can deal damage to Covington. Covington threw in some big punches, but in the end, he reverted to a strategy he knew would win the fight.

At least the aftermath confirmed that this feud – to borrow a catchphrase from the early days of the UFC – was real. Anyone who thinks that maybe, just maybe, two former roommates have forged a soured friendship just to sell money per view is mistaken.

And why should one question the sincerity of bad blood? Well, Covington’s biggest successes are built on fake anger and hatred. Remember the aftermath of his second fight with Kamaru Usman? After mercilessly mocking the UFC welterweight champion in the build-up, Covington hugged Usman and said, “You know I’m just trying to sell it to you. … It’s all love. “

But while the Covington-Masvidal feud was not the invention of an advertising campaign, it to be The biggest selling point of the war. There’s no championship on the line, making this a rare pay-per-view without a single title fight. And the match wasn’t even an elimination to determine the winner as the title challenger. Covington has lost two of his last three games, both defeats coming before Usman’s challenges. Masvidal entered Saturday’s main event with a two-loss win – also due to a double loss to the champion.

Covington’s win keeps him close to the top of the 170-pound leaderboard, but he won’t see the champion anytime soon – unless that belt is being worn by Leon Edwards, who has been promised to challenge for the next UFC welterweight title. If Usman remains at the top of Welterweight Mountain, it will be a long road back to that mountain for Covington.

While there is a limit to the possibility of an upward move from this win, the stakes are huge. For a boxer, settling a grudge really means everything. Covington and Masvidal’s development, while rooted in a more organic grudge, is boring in comparison – partly because about the nature of their feud and how deep it runs. While Thursday’s press conference was filled with unending buzz with the two men talking to each other for what seemed like an eternity, as each boxer sat separately for an interview during the week, we really had to hear what they have to say.

But maybe it’s better that we don’t hear. Vile insults transcend the boundaries of politeness. The worst part is that Covington, who is famous for dragging the sport through the mud with him, has included Masvidal’s ex-wife and children in his trash talk.

In contrast, Masvidal sometimes tries to position himself as the voice of reason. “You don’t have to be that guy,” he said of Covington in a TV talk Michael Bisping, a veteran and a trash talker in his own right. “Especially in our beautiful sport that we have, you don’t need that. There have been two men or two women who will be locked in a cage and beat each other.”

Good mark. But then, less than two minutes later in the same interview, Masvidal pounced on the same brand of filth, fueled family discord, and alleged that Covington had inappropriate interactions with members of the family. family member of a coach.

At the end of UFC 272, Covington tries to continue the ugly story. “I just take care of the trash on the streets of Miami,” he said in the interview inside the Octagon. “Now it’s time to take care of the Louisiana Swamp Trash. Where are you, Dustin Poirier? “

Poirier, like Masvidal, trains at American Top Team, the South Florida gym that Covington calls home before being kicked out of the house in 2020. Covington wants to make Poirier, a natural lightweight, conquer ATT his next.

The caption seems a bit surprising, but what else is there for Covington to do? He has ruled out title contention in the welterweight division, and while the move to middleweight looks exciting, UFC president Dana White has dismissed any notion that Covington could gain as much as 185 pounds and have get an instant shot at the champion, Israel Adesanya. So Covington asked for a light match, for another feuding match in which the circumstances would be extremely personal, and Covington would conveniently be a favored opponent in the fight.

Do we really need to go there again?

This is not to say that there is no room for the flames of competition to burn among athletes vying for championships, higher positions in the leaderboards or even higher bankrolls. In all sports, not just in fighting games, the competition becomes fierce. For many, sport is an escape from serious problems that create mistrust and malice in a divided world.

Nowhere is combat more intense than in the business of fighting. And that’s good. It doesn’t have to be a gentleman or a lady. But personal grudges that push trash talk beyond the boundaries of decency and safety don’t reflect well in MMA.

But the truth is that Covington may not have been able to auction it any other way, until another blow to the title becomes indisputable. Going back to his tried and true play may be the only way forward, but with that said, fights of this kind often lead to feelings of unsatisfactory endings. A mere sports competition might not satisfy Masvidal’s hatred. But this fierce game is elevated to something more exciting when two warriors who have been fighting mercilessly for half an hour hear the final whistle, end the violence, and embrace each other in respect. And what we saw at the end of the night between Covington and Masvidal was anything but that.